


(hurt and grieve but) don't suffer alone

by diiangelo



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Cabeswater - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Light Angst, M/M, Noah Czerny Feels, POV Alternating, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-The Raven King, Pre-Call Down the Hawk, i see canon and i say fuck off, no beta we die like noah, ronan and gansey are bffs, sort off??, this is 9k of me crying about noah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:34:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27637607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diiangelo/pseuds/diiangelo
Summary: For half a second, he lets himself hope. Ronan’s gaze flickers, an expression of confusion flashing across his face as he hauls Gansey back into the car. But he doesn’t look toward Noah, so Noah lets himself sink to the ground as the full weight of what happened sinks in.Distantly, he knows something like this would happen.He spent 7 years dead, reliving his murder in a tangled spider’s web of his own body falling and Gansey’s body falling and Cabeswater falling and the Ley line rising from it all. But that traitorous part of him still hoped they would remember. That he would fall and rise again. That he wouldn’t flicker out, another candle extinguished after it burned past its use.He was wrong, it seems.
Relationships: Noah Czerny & Adam Parrish, Noah Czerny & Blue Sargent, Noah Czerny & Richard Gansey III, Noah Czerny & Ronan Lynch, Richard Gansey III & Ronan Lynch, Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	(hurt and grieve but) don't suffer alone

**Author's Note:**

> hoo boy buckle up because this is a Journey and a Half featuring dealing with trauma and ghostly shenanigans  
>   
> title is from "achilles come down" by gang of youths which i listened to for like 3/4 of this

**1\. Noah**

He knows something is wrong when Gansey wakes up.

The entire affair is unbelievable. There’s no other word for it. He’s seen Gansey die, lived it so many times it’s been seared into his eyelids. But this feels different. It feels wrong. It feels like he’s had glasses slipped over his eyes that shifted everything just a few inches left.

 _There’s something wrong,_ the bone-deep ache in his body tells him. _But what?_

Noah knows he slips in and out of reality sometimes. Before, he was suspended between the two worlds. Some days more alive, and others, more gone. The days he was more alive, he could feel it.

He feels empty now.

Gansey takes in a breath, and the symphony paused between movements starts again with a viciously joyful tune.

They rally around him like bees flocking to their hive, helping him up and dusting off his jacket and asking so many questions they tangle up together. Gansey doesn’t say anything, merely surveying them with a grin on his face like he can’t believe they are there. With him — with him of all people

He reaches out a hand and hesitantly touches Blue’s face. There are tear tracks making paths down her cheeks, with new ones collecting in her eyes. She throws herself in his embrace and they cling to each other. After a moment, Adam and Ronan and Henry gather too, and they stay together sitting on the beaten gravel road in the middle of nowhere, tied together by a Ley line and a little bit of magic.

_The Ley line._

That’s what feels different. Noah searches and searches, reaching his hand to his neck in a move to check for a pulse, but there’s nothing there. The Ley line isn’t running through him anymore.

(He remembers how, on the days he could feel himself slipping on time’s riverbank stones, wet with the splashes of the rushing stream, he’d put his hand up to his neck and feel the way the Ley line ran, a steady rhythm. He’d fool himself into believing it was a pulse, that he was alive.)

“Gansey!” he says, voice bordering on a shout. “Gansey!”

Gansey doesn’t even turn, and Noah can feel his heart — the decayed thing that used to be his heart — splinter.

“Blue?” No answer. “Adam?” Silence. “Henry?” Not even a moment of acknowledgment. A sob sticks in his throat, but he wills himself to stay calm. “Ronan?”

For half a second, he lets himself hope. Ronan’s gaze flickers, an expression of confusion flashing across his face as he hauls Gansey back into the car. But he doesn’t look toward Noah, so Noah lets himself sink to the ground as the full weight of what happened sinks in.

Distantly, he knows something like this would happen.

He spent 7 years dead, reliving his murder in a tangled spider’s web of his own body falling and Gansey’s body falling and Cabeswater falling and the Ley line rising from it all. But that traitorous part of him still hoped they would remember. That he would fall and rise again. That he wouldn’t flicker out, another candle extinguished after it burned past its use.

He was wrong, it seems.

If he followed them, he might’ve noticed the discomfort of the people in the car. The way their relief — their tangible relief that Gansey was there with them, alive and breathing — was lined with a regret they couldn’t place.

He wasn’t. He was still on the gravel, and he felt that he would sell his soul if only to feel the little stones digging into his skin.

The emotions bubble over, and Noah can’t stop himself. He screams.

**2\. Blue**

Somewhere between falling into her mother’s arms and drinking a cup of overwhelmingly mint tea, Blue realizes that she’s looking for someone.

Their group of misfits, needing a place to camp out the rest of the night, make a beeline for 300 Fox Way. The car lays abandoned in the driveway and they shuffle inside the door.

 _What a sight they must be,_ Blue thinks.

Ronan’s jacket is draped over Adam, the latter leading the former on to the couch so he can collapse. Cabeswater, Ronan told them on the way back, was as good as gone. It had dismantled itself to bring back Gansey, leaving behind nothing.

“ _I’m sorry,” she said, unsure of how to respond. She focused her attention on his elbow, which dug into her side. There wasn’t close to enough space for them all in the backseat, but they squished and crammed and made it work._

_“Don’t be.” His reply was terse. “Dickface is alive, isn’t he? The stupid forest can regrow. Gansey can’t.”_

As the person who was inexplicably linked to it, Ronan was hit hardest by its… death? Disappearance? Blue doesn’t know what to call it. Adam, too, looked exhausted, but he was at least able to stand.

Maura hands Adam and Ronan small ceramic mugs, and they don’t even protest, only taking short sips of the hot liquid before grimacing. Henry stands to the side, surveying the odd collection of knickknacks in what Blue called home. She raises an eyebrow at him, a silent challenge. He nods in what she presumes is understanding and goes to help one of the house’s temporary borders — a psychic from Arizona, on a cross-country meditation trip of some sort — to make more tea in the kitchen.

Gansey’s weight, the full of which had been leaning on her a moment before, disappears as he begins speaking to Maura. She looks at him incredulously, but Blue assumes that has less to do with the fact that he’s her daughter’s sort-of-boyfriend and more to do with the fact that he died a mere hour before and was now discussing which regions were best for the cultivation of different tea leaves.

Her eyes move to the last armchair, a beaten blue monstrosity of lumps and badly stitched floral patterns Blue had insisted on buying when she was four. Her mother _hated_ it, but it had always been Blue’s favorite.

It feels too empty. She could have sworn someone used to sit there during their excursions to Fox Way, paying no mind to the lumps and tracing the flower with a strange fascination.

A voice lingers in the back of her mind, lilting and unfamiliar. _“This one’s my favorite because the leaves make it look like it’s dancing. Don’t laugh at me, Blue, it does! Look!”_

But where did she hear that voice before?

“Blue?” Gansey asks. She tears her eyes away from the armchair and smiles when she sees him wrapped in one of her never-ending shawls. This one is purple, with little green tassels on the end, and it makes Gansey look so ridiculous she has to laugh.

The laughs turn into tears.

Gansey nearly drops his cup as he goes to her, wrapping his arms around her as the purple-green shawl falls on her shoulders too.

“If you ever die again,” she chokes out. “I will kill you myself, you asshole.”

His laugh is watery. “I don’t think I’ll have anyone to sacrifice themselves for me that time.”

_What?_

He notices what he’s said too, eyebrows furrowed at the words that slipped out. “I mean something. We don’t exactly have unlimited Cabeswaters here.”

“You might have to ask Ronan for another one, then.”

And there is Ronan, his voice gruff but void of any heat. “If you want another sentient forest, go make your own, asshole.”

“I promise, Ronan,” Gansey says. “I will let the magical forests stay with you.”

There’s an awkward beat of silence that hangs in the air. That nagging feeling that a different voice, one not in this room, should be speaking pulls at her again. Blue doesn’t know if anyone else realizes it, but no one moves to speak, so it's possible.

The fragile air is shattered as Henry and Priya, the Arizona psychic, bustle into the room with two cups of tea each. From what she can glean, Blue thinks each is a different flavor, so she wordlessly takes one and hopes for the best. One sip contains so much mint her eyes begin to water.

_“Mint is just glorified toothpaste and anyone that doesn’t think so probably has a toothpaste kink or oral fixation or both. There’s no other reason people would eat that hell-flavor.”_

Blue does her best to banish the mint-bashing voice from her mind, but it lingers. As Adam and Ronan depart for the Barns, one of Henry’s friends picks him up, Gansey tucks himself into a night of sleeping on a couch, and Maura tidies the room after their whirlwind stop. Blue can only think of the voice and the blue armchair.

“Are you ok?” Gansey, bless his heart, looks disheveled, exhausted, and aged a decade, but he’s still worried for her.

“I think I’m still processing.”

He nods and presses a soft kiss to her forehead. The casual act of intimacy catches her off guard, but she welcomes it. “Well, go to sleep. You’ll have plenty of time to process tomorrow, Jane.”

She purses her lips. “I know, I just—” she glances at the armchair again.

Gansey tracks her movement but says nothing of the way she frets. “Jane,” he speaks again. “Tomorrow.”

“He’s right, you know,” her mother says from behind her. Blue, to her surprise, doesn’t react to the sudden appearance. “Have you looked at yourself?”

Blue looks down, distantly registering the dried mud and sticks and leaves that cling to her outfit.

Maura flicks the lightswitch and their little lamp goes out. The room is completely dark.

“Both of you get some sleep,” she says, channeling every bit of motherly concern she can manage. “Preferably on different floors of the house.”

Gansey chuckles softly. “I don’t think we could both fit on the couch anyway.”

Blue’s mind is still occupied, so the words go in one ear and out of the other. “I’ll see you in the morning, Gansey.”

He smiles in response.

Blue goes upstairs.

The chair sits, empty.

**3\. Henry**

Henry, for all his jests and boisterous claims, knows how loneliness feels more often than he’d like. The Vancouver Crowd amazes him, the way they click together and coexist with ease, each one of them knowing where to push and pull, where their boundaries lie.

It leaves him with a gaping hole in his heart, one that craves the _something more_ everyone but him seems to have. His eyes follow the other students at Aglionby, the way Gansey and Lynch trust each other almost too much for two polar opposites, the way Parrish slowly joins them until they form a strange trio of unhealthy codependency, the way a short girl with choppy hair and exuberant fashion sense tags along with them as soon as they slip off of Aglionby property.

He wants an all-encompassing friendship like that, one where trust breathes between them as easy as air. He hates the way he’s never felt it.

And then he tastes it, touches it with the briefest press of the palm of his hand. He witnesses Gansey die and then Gansey comes back and then they’re in Blue Sargent’s house and Ronan Lynch can dream up forests and Adam Parrish can communicate with the forests and magic is real and it breathes between them with as much ease as trust and air.

After he has an obligatory breakdown over the events that occurred on the abandoned Virginia highway — the Ley line, as they later inform him — he becomes a part of their group. Kind of.

There’s still some he doesn’t understand, some he doesn’t tell him. Secrets are a second language and while they slowly unveil themselves, there are some that Henry may never learn. He sticks out like a sore thumb in their group, absorbed only by the necessity of crisis.

Others notice it too.

It’s during the last week of school that someone points it out. They call him out for what he is — an imposter, a liar masquerading with the people that barely put up with him.

Henry walks with Parrish — no, Adam — while the two of them having a shallow discussion on mechanics. Ronan and Gansey join them, and the four are certainly a sight as they approach the Pig. They have an appointment with many types of pizza at Nino’s soon, and excitement wells up in Henry at the prospect. They don’t need to invite him anymore, he notes. They expect him to tag along, just like a friend.

He’s knocked out of his reverie when Tad shoves past him.

“Oh, didn’t see you there Cheng!” he says, eyes darting between the group. “I didn’t know you guys were friends.”

“We aren’t,” Lynch grunts with an eye roll. Henry ignores the way a shard of ice pierces his heart.

“So, you’re just the replacement, then?” Tad’s tone is light, but there’s a mocking undercurrent that sets Henry on edge.

“A replacement for what?” Adam asks, stepping in front of him. Defensive.

“You know,” Tad says, waving his arm between them. “There were always four of you, and then there wasn’t, and now there is again.”

Henry’s brow furrows in confusion, and it’s clear the others are just as confused as him.

“What the hell are you talking about, Carruthers?” Ronan looks openly hostile. “If you’re just fucking with us, go away. We have better things to do."

Tad looks between them again. “I could’ve sworn…” he trails off, muttering to himself. “I could’ve sworn someone else was usually with you.”

Ronan snorts. “Hate to break it to you, Carruthers, but I think you’ve lost it.” Adam rests a hand on Ronan’s arm and steers him away from Tad, who looks slightly bewildered.

Tad turns toward only him and says, “Wait a minute, Cheng.”

The words are an order hidden as a casual request. Henry halts.

“We’ll see you at Nino’s?” Gansey asks. Henry nods and watches their cars pull away.

“What do you want, Tad?” His tone is abrasive, but he can’t bring himself to care. Fuck Tad for insinuating whatever he was insinuating. For calling him a replacement.

“Listen, Cheng, I know I’m not going crazy.” _Well, that’s a great way to start the statement_ , Henry thinks. “There was always someone else that hung out with them — I mean, with you guys, right?”

“No, Tad, there wasn’t. So, if you’re done being an asshole, albeit indirectly, I have to go.”

Henry silently gets in his car, but his brain stays at Aglionby, thinking of what Tad said. Was he replacing someone? Was someone even there? Because if he was just a replacement for someone he can’t even remember completely, someone that hangs in the corner of his mind but is there nonetheless, then he’ll hate himself for it.

“Are you alright?” Blue asks him when he gets there.

“I’m fine,” he says, but his thoughts stay at Aglionby. At the Aglionby boy that undeniably belongs around their circular table with them but isn’t there.

Maybe he doesn’t mention it, because maybe he’s selfish and he wants it a little too much, and maybe he doesn’t notice that even with him at the table, there’s still one spot leftover.

There’s still an open seat for a nonexistent boy, one that haunts the heels of their steps.

**4\. Adam**

He wakes up screaming.

The terror lays lodged in his throat as he scrambles off the bed, throwing the duvet to the side and pushing himself into a corner. His breathing comes out in short, stifled gasps, as his eyes acclimate to the dark.

The door swings open and suddenly Ronan is there at his side, but Adam can’t hear a word he’s saying.

It takes a moment, but Ronan realizes and moves so that he’s on Adam’s other side. Because Adam is deaf in one ear. Because Adam is not only just trailer trash with a redneck accent but _deaf_ trailer trash with a redneck accent that got himself possessed and attacked his boyfriend and probably isn’t any better than his father and—

“Parrish!” Ronan says, snapping his finger in front of Adam’s eyes. “Breathe.”

Adam knows how panic attacks are, having coached himself out of them more than once, but this is different. This panic attack hasn’t stemmed from any of his normal fears. This came from the suffocation of the demon and the emptiness left behind now that Cabeswater, Adam’s lifeline, is dead.

He takes several slow, heaving, breaths, until his inhaling and exhaling even out.

Useless platitudes won’t appease Ronan, so Adam settles for honesty. Cold, brutal honesty.

“Do I deserve this?”

Ronan blinks, taken aback. “What?”

“All of this,” Adam whispers. “The graduation, Harvard…” his eyes lock on to their hands, intertwined. “This?"

“Parrish,” Ronan says with a sigh. “Adam. If there was anyone in the world who deserved this, it would be you.”

“But _why_? Why me?”

“I don’t know, Adam. But it is you, and you deserve it. Every moment of it.”

_You can’t feel guilty for no reason, Adam. You made the best out of a bad hand, and that’s admirable. Now take what you’ve made and finally go after what you always wanted._

The memory strikes a chord in Adam, a small message that someone told him once. He can’t remember who.

“Will you come tomorrow?” he asks Ronan. There’s hardly any space between them, laying on the bed. He watches Ronan’s eyes as he makes the request. It’s a gamble.

“If you want me to,” Ronan says, voice low.

“Of course.”

“Then yes, I will. You’re officially done with high school, Parrish; you can finally join the club.”

“I think graduation and dropping out are different, Lynch.”

Ronan laughs softly. Here, his rough edges have been sanded away into something that Adam can safely hold in his hand, hide in his heart, without fear of his corners pricking him. “You’re the future lawyer, Parrish. Lawyer me a degree in badassery so I don’t need a high school diploma.”

It’s Adam’s turn to laugh. “I don’t think that’s how it works, Ronan.”

“Well, fuck tradition, am I right?”

* * *

For someone who believes wholeheartedly in disregarding tradition, Ronan looks scarily good in his suit and tie. Seeing Opal clutching his hand, cap over her head in a billowing floral sundress, complete with bright yellow tights, warms Adam’s heart. That’s them. That’s his family, tattoos and tights included.

Blue is sitting next to Ronan at their table. In the quad of Aglionby, both she and Ronan stand out. Maybe it’s their unconventional dress or how around them, there’s more energy than in the numerous tables in their periphery. Maybe it’s their constant cheering as the graduating class lines up.

Of their group, first goes Henry, who, although he remains a relatively new and volatile addition, garners obnoxious applause from both Blue and Ronan. Then comes Gansey, who has the easy politician’s smile painted on his face. Adam can read his eyes, though, and he sees the way Gansey practically burns with happiness, so uncharacteristic from his _Richard_ facade.

It’s his turn. Adam Parrish. Done with Henrietta at last.

On autopilot, he shakes hands, gets his diploma, delivers the valedictorian’s speech from memory, adding any necessary pauses and inflections. His eyes don’t refocus until he’s on the other side of the stage and Gansey and Blue and Ronan and Henry are hugging him, and he’s hugging them back, and he’s surrounded by his family.

His family.

He searches the crows instinctively, but for who he doesn’t know. His mother? Someone else? A friend?

It remains a tingle in the back of his mind as graduation wraps up and he joins the others at the table. Suddenly the sun is beginning to fall and the final speech of the night is upon them. It’s never something that Adam gave any thought — the Czerny Award for an Outstanding Member of the Student Community, or some other long title — but the name soothes the irritation in the back of his mind.

He leans toward Ronan and whispers, “Do we know a Czerny?”

Ronan leans back, careful to keep his voice quiet. “No? I know there’s some woman named Czerny who speaks at Raven Day but not much else.”

Adam listens as the speech draws to a conclusion, then leans over again. “Are you sure we never knew someone named Czerny? I remember having a friend like that.”

“I think you’re just tired, Parrish,” Ronan replies. “Get some sleep once we’re home, ok?”

The words return. _You can’t feel guilty for no reason, Adam. You made the best out of a bad hand, and that’s admirable. Now take what you’ve made and finally go after what you always wanted._

“You’re right. I’m just tired.”

**5\. Ronan**

Ronan may have denied what Adam told him, but the same feeling continues to itch under his skin. For Adam, it was soft and lingering, something that felt like an occasional nuisance. For Ronan, it commandeered his attention and seeped into every one of his unoccupied moments.

He goes through the motions, immersing himself in the strange farmer-esque life he’s built, but whenever the others arrive at the Barns, he knows they’re missing something.

He thinks, maybe, that visiting Monmouth will help. He needs to clear out the last items from his room to bring back to the Barns, so maybe something under all the clutter will jog his memory.

It’s not a great idea by any stretch but buried under heaps of dream creations and gas-station receipts and polaroid stacks from Gansey’s (continuous) vintage phase may be the answer he was looking for.

 _It’s hard to find the answer if you don’t even know which questions to ask_ , he thinks.

Nevertheless, he picks himself up from the bed, throws the comforter over Adam and Opal curled up beside him, and drags himself out of the Barns. At dawn, it feels ethereal. You could tell him that it was all the product of a reckless dreamer like him, like his father, and he would accept it without hesitation.

Gansey is there when he arrives, waiting at the door with a cup of coffee and nail polish in hand.

“I don’t see you much these days,” he explains. “I thought we could have a final friends’ day. Before you leave.” After a slight hesitation. “Monmouth will be empty without you.”

The sentiment isn’t lost on Ronan. He grins and plucks the nail polish from Gansey’s hand. “Is this Blue’s shit? It’s the nice kind.” It’s a burnt orange that will clash terribly with his curated aesthetic, but Ronan knows Gansey’s inclination to anything fall-colored.

“Jane let me borrow it and told me, to quote, ‘if you let Lynch use the last of my nail polish we’re divorcing.’”

Ronan couldn’t help but snort. He shoots her a text, a succinct _fuck off but thanks for the makeup_ , and goes inside. Some of the stuff is already in boxes, so he goes into his room and surveys the piles of leftover dream things.

“I didn’t know I had this much shit,” he says because it looks like an overzealous dragon with a hoarding problem has made a nest in his room.

Gansey materializes beside him. “I didn’t know what to throw away and what to keep. I honestly don’t know what most of this is.”

Standing next to the window of his room, he feels a memory hovering at the edge of his mind. A loud yell accompanied by a voice obscured by static. _He threw me out the window!_ Ronan, despite what his instincts scream, brushes it off and turns his gaze toward the mess of a bedroom he resided in for so long.

Ronan sighs as he begins sifting through the first pile, which ranges from small decorative toys to a floating cloud being crushed by a miniature diorama of the Pig to a bundle of discarded EpiPens. “This is going to take me a long time, isn’t it?” He says.

“Well,” Gansey replies, clapping his hands together. “We best get started, then.”

* * *

Three hours later and the majority of Ronan’s shit has been sorted into bags, Ronan and Gansey are eating Panera on the floor, and Gansey has a drying coat of burnt orange carefully applied to his nails. As far as bonding goes, it’s unconventional, but Ronan and Gansey could not be summarized in better a word.

“So,” Ronan repeats, and there’s a shit-eating grin on his face. “You flirted with your predestined true love…by talking to her about ducks?”

Gansey makes a face. “I panicked! What else do I talk about to women? Especially women who wouldn't hesitate to punch me!"

“Gansey,” Ronan replies, setting his sandwich down sternly. “I wouldn’t know. I’m so gay it’s not even funny.”

Waving him off, Gansey continues. “Having conversations within the realm of normal propriety is difficult, especially with someone as unconventional as she is.”

“Maybe conversations would be easier if you didn’t use the phrase _realm of normal propriety_ , dumbass.”

A pillow flies toward Ronan’s face. “Well, what do you and Adam talk about then?”

“Magical forests. Half-children we’ve sort of adopted from magical forests. My lack of direction in life and his obsessive direction in life. Tomatoes.”

Gansey raises an eyebrow. “You flirt by talking about tomatoes, I hardly think you’re allowed to criticize me.”

“Well yeah, because nothing says pick up line more than ‘this tomato is pretty red, which is the color you’ll be when I—’”

And another pillow hits him. “I don’t need to know of your sexual exploits, Lynch.” Ronan wiggles his eyebrows in response.

Ronan laughs and falls back on the hardwood floor, sweeping his arms in a grand gesture. He bumps into the bookshelf next to him, only to be surprised when something gets lodged loose and almost rolls off it.

Shooting out his hand, Ronan grabs it. It’s a snowglobe, some cheap novelty item that a tourist would swipe on their visit to _historical southern towns_. The movement has dislodged snow, the glittery flakes falling around the townhouse in the center of the globe. Ronan doesn’t know why, but he throws it in the “shit I don’t want but want to give my friends” pile. Maybe someone would like it.

Someone specific would like it, he just can’t remember who.

“Gansey,” he says after a moment.

“Yes?”

“I—” he can’t bring himself to articulate it. Seeing the snowglobe, for whatever reason, reminds him of how close he came to losing Gansey just a few months ago. For better or for worse, the boat shoes, polo wearing, historical nerd painting his nails next to him was his best friend, and he would fight heaven and earth to make sure he was alright. “You’re always welcome at the Barns. You know that, right?”

“Of course, Ronan.”

“I mean it, Gansey. You ever get tired of this ghost town, just drop by, and I’ll let you and Opal bunk together.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Good, now come here and let me finish doing your other hand.” He motions for the nail polish and begins to work. “We need to look hot for Adam and Blue.”

Gansey holds out his hand, and the burnt orange reflects in the overhead lights. It reminds him of the glittering flakes in the snowglobe.

* * *

When he arrives back at the Barns, exhaustion settles over him, an unfamiliar friend. It’s a welcome ache that reminds him of how he spent his day. He was actually productive, and the time with Gansey was something long overdue.

Ronan throws the various trash bags of stuff hauled back from Monmouth into the room. Adam and Opal are in the kitchen.

“How’d it go?” Adam asks, pressing a chaste kiss to Ronan’s cheek. He has flour on his shoulder, and Opal is covered in _something,_ and the whole scene is so domestic Ronan wants to cry.

“Really good,” he murmurs, taking a sip of whatever sauce they have simmering over the stove.

Adam notices his nails and grins. They’re a little messy — Gansey’s hands shake on a good day, and he has no sense of coordination whatsoever — but they must do whatever seduction they were supposed to, because Adam takes Ronan’s face in his hands and kisses him, slow and deep.

They break away before Ronan’s own hands can explore Adam’s body. Opal sits near the side, taking pieces of pasta and weaving them into shapes, happily oblivious to the two of them.

“Go get changed,” Adam says. “Pasta will be done in a minute.”

Ronan salutes him. “Sir, yes, sir!” He says mockingly.

Adam rolls his eyes and shoos him away.

Ronan finds something comfortable to wear but is reminded of the snowglobe as it sits on the edge of the open trash bag. He fishes it out and, after contemplating it, sets it on the nightstand. Pulling out a piece of paper, he scribbles a note for himself without thinking, rushing so he can get to the kitchen and join Adam.

The next day, he’ll realize that the note changes everything.

Because the next day, he’ll wake up, Adam by his side, and Opal snuggled between them, to see the note laying for all the world to see.

He’ll notice his own words in his messy scrawl and see the answer he had been searching for since that night in June.

 _Give the snowglobe to Noah_ , the note will say.

And he’ll breathe out the name as the puzzle pieces click and a voice comes flooding back, memories of a smudge of a boy falling out a window and gazing at a collection of snow globes and arguing over pizza and so much more. The answer to a question he didn’t know he had.

 _Noah_ , he’ll say, the word twisting dangerously in his mind. _His name was Noah._

**+1. Gansey**

Gansey is stirring a spoonful of sugar into a cup of green tea when Ronan and Adam, still sleep-disheveled and barely awake, burst through the door of Monmouth.

 _“Stop whatever you’re doing at look the fuck at this,”_ Ronan commands, slamming a scrap of paper on the dining table.

 _Give the snowglobe to Noah_ , he reads.

He mouths the words, trying to make sense of them in his mind. “What?” He finally settles on saying.

“It’s Noah,” Ronan says, as though that explains everything. “That’s what’s missing.”

Gansey feels a headache gathering, but it makes some kind of convoluted sense. It makes too much sense, considering he’s never even met a Noah in his life.

“Where are Jane and Henry?”

“I called them,” Adam says. He looks more conflicted about their discovery. Where Ronan is giddy with the lead, Adam is more reserved, cautious. “They’ll be here soon.”

“If it really is _Noah_ ,” Gansey says carefully, measuring his words so they don’t sound accusatory or offensive. “Then why don’t we know anything about him?”

“We don’t know,” Adam replies. “It’s like it's on the tip of my tongue—”

“—But you can’t explain it,” finished Henry, breezing into the room, Blue on his heels.

“So, we aren’t the only ones who have felt it?” Blue asks. They exchange glances before all speaking up at once.

“The armchair—”

“These people at school—”

“Graduation—"

“The snowglobe—”

Gansey can’t control himself. He pushes his cup of tea on the table next to that fateful sheet of paper. “We need to think,” he says evenly, trying to control the hailstorm of emotions warring within him. “Figure out who Noah is, and why we know him but don’t.”

Adam, ever the voice of reason, speaks up. “Let’s make a list of what we know. At least then, there’s something to look for.”

Gansey locates some spare sheets of paper and a blue pen that’s rapidly running out of ink. They make a bulleted list, reflecting on it as every new point is added.

  * Sat in the blue armchair
  * Hated mint
  * I threw him out the window once
  * Liked glitter
  * Known by other Aglionby kids
  * Reckless
  * Remembered
  * ~~Dead~~



Taking a moment to survey the list, Gansey can no longer quench the emotions inside of him, and he’s overwhelmed with the urge to throw his mug. The tea inside has long gone cold. He looks down, noting that his grip is white against the black ceramic.

The list is a mess, a haphazard compilation of untidy writing and spilled thoughts that hardly encompass even a facet of what this Noah was. Gansey picks it up, squinting at the bottom of the list, where Henry scrawled something before scratching it out. Several lines ran through the word, but it was still legible enough. _Dead_.

“What does this mean?” He asks, his voice strangled. “How can he be…?” He can’t finish the sentence.

Henry tries to explain. “Look, it makes sense. Well, that’s a lie. It’s a total shitshow but after demons and dream girls and magical sentient forests, ghosts seem like a completely plausible conclusion. Don’t ask me why. They just are.”

“It makes sense,” Ronan says, and Gansey officially decides he’s gone crazy. Otherwise, there’s no reason _Ronan Lynch_ and _Henry Cheng_ are agreeing. “I threw him out a window, and he didn’t become a sidewalk pancake, so that’s something.”

“Putting aside the fact that Lynch threw someone out a window, what’s the _remembered_ for?” Blue asks.

“That was me,” replies Adam. “It felt important. The word did, at least.” Adam takes the list from Gansey before his gaze snaps back up to them. “I know how to find him,” he says, and a rush runs through Gansey because Adam’s eyes have that intuitive glint he _knows_ means something big is coming.

Adam points toward the fifth bullet, and Gansey gets it. “You’re a genius, Adam,” he breathes. _Known by other Aglionby kids. Other Aglionby kids._ “If we need to find Noah, he’ll be in the Aglionby records, or a yearbook, or something. Oh, Adam, you wonderful creature.” His coat is lying on the chair in the living room, and he grabs it with a flourish. “Let’s go.”

They lock eyes, a frenzy sparked by the embers of this mystery tying them together like the strings of fate. Everything that felt wrong, every moment since Gansey’s death where something didn’t connect, was because of Noah. Gansey knows it.

* * *

Gansey makes his way through three years in the school newspaper records before Ronan exclaims loudly.

“I found something!”

It’s an old yearbook, from maybe seven or eight years ago, and there’s a weathered photo under a name that makes the gears in Gansey’s brain turn.

 _Noah Czerny_.

The picture is a boy with stark blond hair framing mischievously blue eyes, long strands falling down a middle part that screams teenage rebel without a cause. The next page is a larger spread of his grade, and within it, there’s a picture of Noah with a skateboard.

“That’s him,” he says dumbly. “Noah… Noah Czerny.”

The face brings his mind a little closer to recognition. It’s like the twisting of a safe, every new detail spinning the knob a little closer to unlocking the door.

“There are Czernys that live in Henrietta, right?” Henry asks.

Ronan nods, flipping through other pages of the yearbook for any more signs of Noah. There’s a picture of him in the collage for the school's juniors, face thrown backward, completely carefree, with a skateboard in hand.

Gansey recalls meeting a woman, Adelaide or something of the like, with the last name Czerny. She may know how to find Noah.

* * *

As it turns out, she does not know how to find Noah.

Gansey arrives at Adele Czerny’s house at 4:15 on a Wednesday afternoon.

They have a brief conversation.

Gansey asks, “Do you mind telling me where we could get in contact with your brother, Noah?”

She stares at him incredulously before saying, “Is this some kind of sick joke? What the hell?”

Gansey does not reply. He tries to repeat himself, but Adele cuts him off.

“Get the fuck out!” She snaps, and confusion washes over him. The screen door swings shut as she yells, “I said _get the fuck out!_ ”

* * *

“So,” Ronan begins as they arrive back at Monmouth. “That was a bust.”

Gansey puts his head in his hands. “I don’t understand. Do they not get along? Why would she be so upset?”

Ronan doesn’t answer him, busy typing something on his phone.

“Ronan?” Gansey asks.

“Shut up, Gansey. Just shut up for a moment.” Ronan’s eyes scan his phone before he mutters, “Oh, we fucked up. We really fucking fucked up.”

“What’s wrong?”

Ronan’s phone is unceremoniously shoved under Gansey’s face, and as he reads the headline, his stomach drops to his feet.

_Aglionby Academy student found dead; investigation still ongoing._

_Well_ , Gansey thinks _. That certainly explains quite a bit_.

“We have to show this to the others,” Ronan says. Gansey, frozen in his seat, can barely nod. His mind is racing a million miles a minute because the date for his death is written clear as day on the coroner report’s summary. That _wretched_ date is deathly familiar. It’s a date that’s been scorched into his memory, a brand as sharp as the stingers of the insects that killed him at the same time.

Gansey knows that if things weren’t complicated before, they were now. Because the boy missing from their memories died the same day he did.

* * *

Gansey visits his grave on a Saturday. The others plan to come after school the next day, but Gansey wanted — needed — a head start. He needed to see the person whose life felt so inexplicably tied to his own.

The gravestone was dull and unremarkable, another blip of rock upon the hills of the cemetery. The grass was unkempt, growing around it in a pale, sickly color with dry blades poking into Gansey’s side.

“Hello, Noah,” Gansey says. His words fall flat. He doesn’t know how to speak, how to explain, how to even ask for an explanation. “I did some research on you. You seemed like a very kind person. I wish I remembered knowing you.”

The gravestone refuses to answer.

Gansey sits cross-legged on the ground, grimacing slightly at the pinprick of the grass. He tentatively reaches out a hand and traces the name. _Noah Czerny_. He should know this. It’s then that he notices something of interest.

On the bottom right corner, glaringly obvious now that he had seen it, lay several small scratches in a neat line. Several small scratches of several familiar initials: _RL, RCG, BS, AP._

Ronan Lynch. Richard Campbell Gansey. Blue Sargent. Adam Parrish.

It feels… fake. Out of place. He shows it to Blue the next day, who pales.

“That’s something serious, Gansey,” she explains. “You don’t just initial someone’s gravestone. Especially a random gravestone out of nowhere."

It’s Adam who mentions the body, and its Gansey who feels the overwhelming urge to gag as Blue and Ronan begin debating the ethics of digging up the said body. Adam theorizes that because the initials look relatively new, their group had probably been there. Blue and Ronan believe that Noah’s body — Noah’s incredibly deceased _dead_ body — will have a clue. Henry is alright with anything, although he balks at the idea of grave robbing (as any reasonable person would).

They’re much too enthusiastic about it, but they pull Gansey in, so he finds himself at the cemetery that night with a shovel in his hand and dirt on his polo and regret to rival Atlas’ resting on his shoulders.

They dig and dig until Gansey’s arms nearly fall off, and then Henry hits something solid and Gansey is terrified because _what if it’s a body_ but it’s just a coffin.

An empty coffin.

Noah Czerny’s empty coffin.

Noah Czerny’s empty coffin without the body of the aforementioned Noah Czerny.

Adam looks strangely vindicated as his theory is proven right. Blue, Ronan, and Henry alternate between celebrating and being terrified at the missing body.

Gansey has space for no emotion except crushing emptiness.

* * *

It’s Blue and Adam that approach him, three weeks later, with an idea.

Ronan has him warded off in Monmouth, recovering from “an obsessive research spiral that will lead you into a grave, Jesus Christ Gansey.”

He stares at his walls, at the pictures and newspaper clippings taped together and the sticky notes filling in gaps of uncertainty. Corkboards and string had never been his forte, but he made do with what he could.

Gansey knows part of it is his own selfishness. In the coming weeks, Adam would transition to Cambridge, Ronan to the Barns, Blue and Henry with him (if they didn’t abandon him by then. He wouldn’t blame them if they did).

He wishes, yearns more than anything, that Noah is real. Because Noah galvanized their group from slowly drifting away, and maybe it’s his own selfishness, but he isn’t ready to get rid of them yet.

So, when Blue and Adam approach him, both looking apprehensive, he practically trips over himself to agree with them.

“You haven’t even heard our idea,” Blue says, one eyebrow raised.

“I trust you,” he says.

Blue nods her head toward Adam, who gives him a rundown of their plan as they drive to the Barns.

It’s not a bad plan by any means. It’s reckless and dangerous and could get them killed (or worse), but it’s _something._

Adam explains how he and Ronan had been brainstorming when they remembered how the connection with Noah began. They ran through everything to do with Cabeswater, looking for some missing link, when Ronan recalled how their entire journey began. _Arbores loque latine._ The trees speak Latin. Cabeswater bent time for them, let Ronan send himself a message as a nudge in the right direction. That, Adam says, was what drove them to pitch their idea to Blue.

Blue takes over from there, highlighting how Maura told them the limits of scrying. How, possibly, if Adam scried backward and Ronan tied him into his dreams and Blue served as an amplifier, they could fall back in time to Cabeswater. Not for very long, but long enough to see if Noah existed, even then.

Their problem was glaringly obvious: even with Ronan, they needed a more physical tie to Cabeswater so they wouldn’t end up somewhere else. Gansey, whose blood ran with the water that fed Cabeswater so long ago, was that link. With Henry grounding him to reality, he could serve as the funnel to the power they were trying to tap.

“We could die,” Adam says. “We could get lost in time.”

Gansey ignores the negativity, brain buzzing with other questions. “How do we know we can change anything?”

Blue jumps in. “We don’t. But that’s the thing — we aren’t trying to.” At his confused look, she elaborates. “Noah is a ghost, right? We remember a teenage boy, even though he should easily be in his 20s by now. Noah, as a ghost, exists out of time as a linear construct.”

Gansey feels a headache coming on.

“Time works differently for Noah, so we can probably pull him to _us_ since he’s existing in some weird kind of limbo. Hopefully, we can warn him of what’ll happen, and he’ll do something on his end to change it — maybe even disconnect himself from the Ley line so when Cabeswater short-fuses it, he won’t be affected — and so he’ll still be with us. Instead of, y’know, being completely erased. Of course, we’re operating under the assumption he _is_ connected to Cabeswater and the Ley line, but since he disappeared when we fucked them up — no offense, Gansey — he should be ok? Hopefully?”

Gansey doesn’t understand it, not completely. He understands enough, though, which is how he finds himself sitting cross-legged on Ronan’s living room carpet, waiting for him to arrive. There is a thick tension in the air, but no one attempts to break the silence.

“Are you excited about our trip?” Henry asks Blue. It's small talk, polite. A filler for the large gap left as they wait and wait, ignoring the sheer magnitude of what they’re about to attempt.

Ronan emerges from his kitchen and sits himself on the couch. One of his hands links with Adam, who is on the floor next to him, scrying into a bowl.

“Look into the bowl with Adam, Gansey,” Blue commands. “That way he can direct us.”

Gansey has one hand pressed with Henry’s, the other boy his only anchor to the real world. Henry sits by Blue, but she deliberately stays disconnected. This way, she reasons, they’re all reflected equally instead of one person upsetting the balance with her aid.

Gansey doesn’t feel it at first. He just looks and looks into the dark, inky liquid, until his eyes fall shut and then—

—he’s falling. He falls to the group with a sharp _thud_ and groans as the foliage digs into his back. Even from such a convoluted angle, he recognizes his surroundings. He’s in Cabeswater.

The trees bend around him, wind twisting so it runs through his hair and pushes him forward. The world is oversaturated in Cabeswater, the greens so bright and browns so deep they feel unnatural. It feels right to him.

“Adam? Ronan?” He calls out.

Adam replies from his right. “Over here!”

When Gansey reaches him, he asks, “Where’s Ronan?”

Adam shrugs. “He’s here, but not physically. I’d say in spirit, but that seems like a badly-timed joke.”

They pick their way through the trees and bushes, spotting one or two recognizable locations, but no Noah. Adam looks just as perplexed as Gansey.

“Something’s wrong,” he says.

Adam doesn’t reply from behind him, so Gansey turns, only to find him gone.

“Adam? Adam!”

Panic wells up inside him, but he tries to force it back down. “Breath, Gansey, breathe.”

Gansey closes his eyes and takes two large, heaving breaths. Keeping his eyes closed, he takes several steps forward, putting his trust in Cabeswater — in Adam and Ronan and Blue and Henry — to make sure he’d be alright.

He stops when a voice, a damningly familiar voice that pulls his memories forward like a tether, shouting his name.

Gansey snaps his eyes open, and there, in all his glory, is Noah Czerny.

Seeing his face connects the fragmented memories. Like the Greeks saw the stars, those isolated, lonely points, and wove them together into stories, the world touched Gansey’s memories and brought them together into one lifetime, his lifetime. But this time, Noah was in each memory too.

“Noah!” he exclaims. “It’s really you. Oh my god, it’s really you.”

Gansey throws restraint into the wind and runs to him, but Noah’s sharp movement back stalls him.

“What’s wrong with you, Gansey?” he asks.

“I don’t — I don’t understand.”

Noah takes another step back. “You’re not my Gansey.”

Gansey’s mouth parts into an _oh_ as he realizes. “No,” he begins. “I’m not. The truth is, I’m Gansey from the future. Well - not the future, but not the past or the present either.” A pause. “Oh, I’m not making this very easy, am I.”

Noah’s eyebrows practically raise into his hair.

“I know it sounds stupid,” he hurries to defend. “But just let me explain.” And he does. He explains how they pulled him out of time, throwing him into the same type of limbo Noah seems to be in. Since Noah didn’t exist within time, they merely pulled themselves out of it until they inevitably encountered him. And now, since they’ve found the version of Noah who has yet to be erased from time, they can warn him, save him.

By the end of the explanation, Gansey is exhausted. Noah tells him it’s the fact that he shouldn’t be here, out of time. Gansey can read between the lines well enough: he won’t be able to stay for much longer.

“I don’t know how to help you,” he confesses as he feels himself weaken even more.

“It’s alright, Gansey.” Noah’s voice is uncharacteristically soft as he sits next to Gansey. Oh — he must’ve sat down at some point while speaking. He can’t remember.

“But what if we lose you again?” Gansey’s voice is barely a whisper.

“You won’t,” Noah says. “I have an idea. You might hate me for it, but it could work.”

Gansey wants to shake Noah until he confesses, but he doesn’t have the strength to even raise an arm.

“When I see you again,” Noah whispers. “I’ll tell you then.” He’s curled up, knees pulled into his chest as his head rests on them.

 _Again_ , Cabeswater promises, the words resonating like a bass drum through his heart. _I will see you again_.

Gansey’s eyes fall shut, and Noah is gone.

* * *

He expects to wake up screaming like he has so many nights before. Expects to thrash and claw at his own skin, attempting to scrape the burning heat off of himself.

He awakes silently.

His eyes blink open slowly, but he hardly moves before he has four people bombarding him with questions and exclamations.

“What’s happening?” He asks, ignoring their words. His brain feels scrambled and fried, and a headache is building behind his eyes.

Blue is pale next to him, but she slumps in relief after checking his head. “You were out for nearly four hours,” she says.

“What? It can’t have been more than a few minutes.”

Adam speaks up. He’s sitting beside Ronan. Their hands are clasped so tightly together that their knuckles are white. “You stopped breathing at one point. I don’t think you could be considered dead, but you almost were. Again.” His next words are quiet. His voice is hoarse. “I almost killed you in there.”

Gansey tries to speak up, to defend Adam from his own worst enemy, but he doesn’t get the chance. Someone else says the words before his brain processing them all the way through.

“No, you didn’t.” Eyes are drawn to the entrance of the room. “Trust me when I say it takes a lot more than that to kill Gansey. I would know, I’ve lived it way too many times.” And leaning against the doorframe, in all his smudgy blond glory, Noah Czerny grins.

* * *

Gansey ran the situation a million times in his head before it happened. It was one of the flaws he knew he had — this obsession, every possible outcome spinning through his head so he could _plan_ , down to the last meticulous moment.

He had planned for Noah Czerny’s return in every spare moment he could grasp, from the first time the puzzle pieces clicked together. Only a few of those plans involved him, exhausted, on the lumpy couch of 300 Fox Way.

None of those plans involved Blue goddamn Sargent striding toward Noah with the confidence of queens imbued within her, stopping in front of him, and socking him in the jaw.

 _“You absolute asshole,_ ” she seethes. “Do that again and I’ll drag you back topside myself.”

Noah rubs his jaw, and the gesture is familiar. He can recall it, other moments where he did something so similar, other times he stood like that or grinned like that. Gansey is smiling, an expression mirrored on Noah’s face.

“You have no idea,” he says, “how much I missed you guys.”

The others are still regarding him warily. Ronan, ever the skeptic, says, “How are you here? What did you do?”

“Don’t trust me, Lynch?” Noah asks.

“Just trying to make sure whatever shit you don’t won’t come back to bite us in the ass.”

Noah shrugs. “That’s fair.” He runs a hand through his silvery-blond hair and sighs. “So, you know how Gansey and I are weirdly tied together, right?” He’s met with confusion. “I saved him, the first time. We both died at the Ley line. I saved him. Right?”

Gansey wants to stop the story there, because _what the ever-loving fuck_. Noah doesn’t stop.

“Anyway, we’ve always been kind of linked, but not really. And then there was me being anchored to the Ley line so by default Cabeswater because y’all moved me. Like Gansey, but again, not really.” Noah pauses again. “Shit, I’m really bad at this. Ok so —”

“Noah!” Adam exclaims. “Just relax. Calm down and explain.”

Noah takes a few moments to steady himself, breathing in and out. Gansey wonders if he’s actually breathing since he’s a ghost. He’s dead. Because being friends with recently rediscovered dead people is normal for him now.

“After this Gansey found me, I went back. Instead of having you guys anchor me to the Ley line, I made you do something different. You linked me directly to him — to Gansey.” Noah spares him a glance, probably to see how he’s holding up. “It was easier because we were already almost connected. I just changed it a little. Long story short, as long as Gansey’s alive, I’ll be here.”

“And there’s no catch?” Adam asks. “It’s just fine?”

“No catch, not really,” Noah replies. “Once you die, your life — or, afterlife, I guess? — becomes more cyclical. Everything begins and ends at the same time and it just keeps going and going and going and —” Noah stops. He shakes himself back to the present. “Anyway, now my existence, since it’s tethered to Gansey, can happen within time. If that makes any sense.”

“Not at all, my man,” Henry says, clapping Noah on the back.

Gansey had sat silent until now. He didn’t know — he didn’t know so much. He could hardly wrap his head around all of what happened, now this too? His thoughts were a woven, jumbled mess.

“It doesn’t matter,” he found himself saying. “The important thing is, you’re back.”

“As someone incredibly intelligent once said, we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”

“Yes, Lynch,” Gansey says with a laugh. “Absolutely.”

Gansey gets up, letting the blanket on his shoulders pool on the couch. He wraps his arms around Noah, relief flooding every word. “You’re finally back.”

Adam is there, and Ronan too, and Henry and Blue. There is no demon. There is only peace, settling over them like a fine layer of soft, clean snowfall.

“We have so much to tell you,” Blue says.

“I know,” Noah replies.

“You have so much to tell us.” It’s Adam, this time.

“I know.”

Ronan. “We’re not letting you escape anytime soon. I hope you realize that, ghost-boy.”

A razor-sharp grin. “I know.”

Richard Campbell Gansey III was many things. A son, a brother, a friend, a liar, a hopeless romantic, a romantic full of hopelessness. And then, on occasion, a king.

He was a king, and within the four mismatched walls of 300 Fox Way, surrounded by the souls he collected and held close to his heart, his court fell complete.

**Author's Note:**

> gansey and ronan are absolutely disaster gossip friends sorry i don't accept criticism  
>   
> feel free to say hi on [tumblr](https://diiangelo.tumblr.com/)


End file.
